Rachel’s Saga: Using Adolescent Literature in the Mathematics Classroom as a form of Bibliotherapy to Help Students Overcome Math Apprehension

Math anxiety is prevalent and an understanding of mathematics is critical in an increasingly technological/STEM society, teachers must play a role in reducing the levels of math anxiety of learners. More recently, children's and adolescent literature has been recognized now as a means to teaching mathematics to students through the use of stories to make the math concepts relevant and meaningful. Literature may be used as a therapy to reach students who may be frustrated with math and/or who experience math anxiety. Story and picture books such as Math Curse (Scieszka & Smith, 1995) and A Gebra Named Al (Isdell, 2017) are now available for classroom use as forms of bibliotherapy in helping students overcome or come to terms with anxiety toward mathematics The paper shares the story of Rachel and her struggle with math anxiety and how her teacher helped her come to terms with her apprehension of mathematics.